Earthly life

At the end of his life, Plotinus turned his attention from intellectual sphere to the affairs of human life, beginning with the old question of what it meant to live well. The problem Plotinus found in e.g. Aristotelian definition of good life as full actualisation of life was that it applied even to animals and even plants, which certainly actualised their own specific life goals. Plotinus’ solution was to suggest that there was a hierarchy of different types of life and only the form involving higher intellectual awareness was truly perfect. Thus, gods and even humans could be said to live well, but not mere animals or plants.

An important part of Plotinus’ understanding of good life was that it concerned only the mental side or personality of a human being. Body, he said, was no true part of human being and therefore had no effect on how good one’s life was. Thus, poverty, bad health or old age were no obstacles for good life, according to Plotinus. Even the lack of awareness was nothing to care about, since mere existence of good soul was enough for good life - after all, a good general is a good general, even when she is asleep.

A natural question is then why corporeal world is needed at all and equally natural suggestion is that it is just as mistake or even a creation of some malignant entity. Yet, Plotinus was not willing to move in that direction. Instead, he thought that the corporeal world is at least partly due to necessity - intellectual world cannot be the end of the development, but its energy is so great that it must produce something beyond itself. This product is undoubtedly lesser than its origin, Plotinus said.

Despite its imperfection, world still has beauty in itself, and it is governed by an entity, which should be an image of self-thinking intellect and non-corporeal soul. Plotinus compared this world governing entity to a dramatist, using both light and dark colours to create the drama of the world. In this drama, all persons have an important part, whether they are heroes or villains. And it is just a drama, in the sense that humans just move through it, assuming other roles at other times, which makes death and worldly sufferings nothing truly serious.

This world plan does still not take away human responsibility, Plotinus noted. Indeed, the true personality or soul of a human being belongs to a level above the plan of the world. Thus, a human soul is not completely under the world plan and is therefore accountable for her actions.

Once again, then, Plotinus emphasised the mediating role of human soul. Soul, for Plotinus, is characterised by logos, something mediating between perception, awareness of things outside oneself, in the corporeal world, and awareness of oneself. This self-awareness is actually twofold, Plotinus noted. Firstly, soul is aware of itself as logos, that is, as something directed to both outside and within itself. Secondly, it can also become aware of itself as a mere pure self-awareness. At this moment soul actually becomes one with the higher level in hierarchy, the intellect. Soul can so become aware of itself as being dependent of this pure self-awareness - as a sort of reflection of its light.

Pyrrhonists had argued that self-awareness was in a sense impossible - the self that was aware was always something different of what it was aware of and thus both of them were just parts of the whole self. Plotinus denied this and forcefully stated that pure self-awareness must be a simple unity, in which the whole intellect knows the whole intellect, even though this simple self-awareness does then have many aspects within it.

Since pure self-awareness has this aspect of differentiation and multiplicity in it, pure unity, as we should know by now, was then for Plotinus something above all self-awareness. Indeed, one could really not say anything about it, since a statement like “primordial unity is something that exists” still assumes a sort of distinction, when it distinguishes existence from this unity. Despite not being characterised by anything, it is still the source of everything - the original light, which the soul can reach only by losing everything else and merging itself with it.

Just like in the beginning of his career, Plotinus was still interested of the Platonic idea that love serves as a mediator leading individual soul to these higher levels of the hierarchy. In addition, Plotinus was interested of Plato’s mythological notion that, firstly, this love appeared in the form of a divine or daemonic entity, Eros, and secondly, that like Afrodite, Eros appeared also in two forms, as divine and earthly Eros. Plotinus suggested that Afrodite in this myth referred to soul - either the pure or embodied soul - and that there really were concrete entities serving as a connecting links between individual souls and intellectual world.

Although his gaze was always directed to what is good and what might be even more perfect than goodness, Plotinus admitted also that badness is also necessary. The primordial unity projects self-thinking intellect, intellect projects souls and souls finally project matter, which is the ultimate source of badness in the world. Matter exists in a sense, but only as a mere shadow of what properly exists. When souls become enamoured of this shadow existence, their powers diminish. Badness of souls is still not ultimate badness, because they still retain the capacity to clear themselves from the clutches of matter. Even embodied souls can find some of their powers and be able to resist the lure of matter. Still, such a virtuous life is not the ultimate perfection for soul, because it presupposes the fallen state of the soul.

Individual human being, Plotinus said, is then partly just a link in the corporeal, but also living universe. As such a link, an individual is open to the influence of corporeal objects, such as stars - and this is partly why astrology works, Plotinus thought. Yet, he also emphasised, individual is partly able to affect his own destiny and to make one’s own fate either better or worse. This duality of freedom and necessity is reflection of essential duality of what humans are. Firstly, we are pure souls, at most using bodies as tools, but secondly, we are also animals, or animated bodies. In other words, by invigorating body and making it alive, something new is created - first, perceptions, and then, organic processes.

One task of souls in Plotinian hierarchy was then to enliven the otherwise inert matter and connect it with the higher levels of the hierarchy. In this sense, embodied life was good, and there was no need to get rid of it. Indeed, Plotinus noted, true perfection on every level arose not from any striving toward some goal, but out of stillness and from mere existence as such. By this Plotinus did not want to say that e.g. dying is a bad thing. Instead, he pointed out that death was a liberation of soul from its corporeal duties and return to a pure state, from which it had descended.

Categorising being

When does a person act freely? An obvious condition appears to be that one must choose to do something without being forced by any external influences. Yet, Plotinus noted, this is not enough, since a person who had not complete understanding of the situation she was in, could not really act freely - thus, a person killing her own mother would not have done this out of free choice, if she did not recognise her mother. Indeed, Plotinus suggested, true freedom humans could experience only by becoming close to the state of intellect, that is, by becoming free from all bodily needs and having a complete understanding of what is truly good. Freedom, for Plotinus, is then not complete random choice of what to aim for - our freedom is not hindered by our aiming for true good.

When we move to the level of intellect, we notice something peculiar. Unlike soul, the intellect has nothing external that can hinder it from aiming toward goodness. Indeed, intellect just could not be otherwise, because of this lack of external influences. Still, intellect can be called free, just because it can freely strive for goodness. Even more obvious this is in case of the goodness or the goal of everything else - the primordial unity. It can be figuratively said to have made itself to what it wills, because it is perfectly good. Yet, this also means that it couldn’t really be otherwise, since it could not fail to make itself what it wants.

Similarly not able to be otherwise is the self-thinking intellect, and indeed, anything non-corporeal. Corporeal things, on the other hand, always change. This is especially true of the earthly bodies, which eventually decay and turn into other bodies. Then again, celestial spheres hold in a sense middle position between non-corporeal and earthly entities. As bodies, celestial spheres change, for instance, by moving. Yet, their movement is circular and maintained by the worldsoul, which makes their movement continuous and eternal. Furthermore, celestial bodies do not decay, Plotinus insisted - although sun is made of fire, it will never exhaust itself.

Just like celestial bodies held a middle position between non-corporeal entities and earthly bodies, souls held in Plotinus’ hierarchy a middle position between intellectual and corporeal world. Soul has the ability to view both intellectual and corporeal entities. This viewing is not something passive, in which, say, a body would imprint its image on the soul through eyes. Instead, Plotinus said, in perception soul actively grasps the object to get a vision of it. This vision, whether of an intellectual or corporeal object, remains a while in the soul, and with enough force, it can actively bring back the vision to consideration.

In its mediating position, soul can use same expressions both of corporeal and intellectual entities - for instance, it can say that there are both corporeal and intellectual substances. Thus, Plotinus noted, such theories of categorising entities, like the one of Aristotle, would have to be doubled, so that different categories would apply to corporeal and intellectual entities. For instance, corporeal and intellectual substances or beings cannot be beings in the same sense - intellectual entities were for Plotinus much more substantial than corporeal entities.

The Aristotelian category of quantities was in Plotinus’ eyes even more clearly not a truly unified class, because it contained such diverse things as numbers, areas and periods of time. Plotinus noted that in a sense, one could say that numbers were the primary example of quantities, while other quantifiable things were just secondarily quantities. Yet, problematic for Plotinus was that he thought numbers also to be substances in a quite essential manner.

Aristotelian category of relation was, according to Plotinus, even more problematic. Clearly there are many types of relations - left and right, father and son, science and its object are all very different things. Furthermore, even the related things can be very different, for instance, science of physics, an intellectual thing, is something very different from corporeal nature. In case of relations it seems then quite likely, Plotinus noted, that they belong just to our subjective outlook on things.

Aristotelian category of qualities was also a conundrum in Plotinus’ opinion, because Aristotle admitted that he included quite diverse things under that title, such as capacities and shapes. Plotinus also noted that negations of qualities provided another problem - could we say that e.g. non-whiteness is a quality in the same sense whiteness is?

Categories of time and place are also problematic, Plotinus said. Aristotle had already classified time as a general process under quantities. Plotinus replied then that specific times, as parts of time, would have to be also included under quantities. Similarly, Aristotle had classified such places as right and left under relations, so one might suggest, Plotinus implied, that no specific category for spaces was required.

Categories of action and passion were an interesting case. Of action Plotinus noted that this truly appeared to be one type of being - or more likely, he wanted to incorporate Aristotelian category of action into a broader category of processes. Plotinus also noted that compared to actions, passions seemed to require no independent category for themselves - for instance, cutting bread was always the same process, whether you regarded it as an activity of knife or a passion suffered by the bread.

Of the last two Aristotelian categories - having and being in position - Plotinus didn’t have much to say. Of having, he noted that having could be taken as a general category, since, for instance, things had qualities and quantities etc. Then again, both having and being in a position could be regarded as types of relations.

The Aristotelian theory of categories was then too haphazard for Plotinus’ taste. The much more simple Stoic theory also failed to satisfy him. For Stoics, the first and in a sense the most primary category of entities was the material substrate, of which everything else in the world was supposed to consist of. Yet, Plotinus noted, matter as such is just a material that could be potentially shaped in various forms and not a really existing entity and is thus not a good candidate for a principle of everything. What was even more condemning in Plotinus’ opinion was that for Stoics divinity was material, that is, dependent on something not really existing. Plotinus remarked that even Stoics shouldn’t accept matter as the principle, because they think perception should be the ground for stating the existence of something, but matter as such cannot be perceived.

The second Stoic category, qualities, seemed for Plotinus a good candidate for immaterial principles that would shape matter to various shapes. The problem was that Stoics talked only about qualified matter. Further Stoic categories - material things with even more accidental determinations and things in relations - don’t really solve this problem either. Furthermore, Plotinus couldn’t really accept the Stoic idea that all these four categories would be just species of one class containing all possible objects whatsoever, because especially the intellectual entities were just so far removed from corporeal entities that they couldn’t form a unified class of beings.

Plotinus then suggested that intellectual and corporeal levels required different types of categorical hierarchies - and beyond all categorisations lied the primordial unity, which was devoid all multiplicity and thus was beyond all classification. What could be classified was the self-thinking intellect, which contained in its unity several aspects. What the intellect thought was something existing, and indeed, existing in the most proper sense of the word, removed from the mere shadowy corporeal existence. As existent or being, intellect was something that could be, but as thinking it had actualised this potentiality and was now acting, which Plotinus described as life or movement of intellect. Finally, in this act of thinking intellect was always thinking itself, which gave then stability to it. These three classes or principles - being, movement and stability - were then for Plotinus aspects of intellect that could be differentiated, and this differentiation or diversity could then be taken as a fourth aspect. Finally, all these different aspects could be seen as aspects of one and the same intellect, giving us then a fifth aspect or sameness.

Plotinus’ system of intellectual categories had a clear Platonic origin. What Plato wasn’t yet forced to do was to argue that this system was complete and no other category or principle had been missed, and this task was left for Plotinus. He firstly noted that unity was no proper category. The most proper unity of them all, the primordial unity, was supposedly beyond all categorisation, while all other unities have almost nothing in common.

While primordial unity was in a sense a lot earlier than five intellectual categories, other possible candidate categories are figuratively later. Being of intellect, activity of its thinking, the stability of its thinking always itself, the difference of these aspects and the identity behind them are all just different sides in one act of self-thinking. Numbers or quantities and further qualities, on the other hand, belong to further level in Plotinian hierarchy, and similar fate is experienced by relations, times, places, having and position. The only Aristotelian categories left are action and passion, which Plotinus thought were just two sides of the category of movement.

Plotinus still had some possible categories to reject. Goodness, just like unity, is in its most proper form outside the system of categories, since the final good for Plotinus was the primordial unity all things tried to emulate. Beauty in its most proper form, on the other hand, belonged according to Plotinus to the harmonious being of the intellect, while knowledge was an aspect of its activity of thinking. Intellect as such was in a sense just a combination of the five primary categories, while virtue was for Plotinus just a particular type of embodied intellect.

Next obvious question would be how all further things follow from the five principal categories. An important mediating element here are numbers. With just few of the first numbers, it is possible to talk about simple geometrical figures, like triangles and quadrangles, and with the notions of sameness and difference, it is possible to go further and discuss circle and other complex figures.

At the level of corporeal entities, another set of categories is then required, because e.g. corporeal beings or substances are completely different from intellectual substances. Corporeal being is not a real being, in comparison with intellectual entity. In some sense, we cannot speak of multiple intellectual entities, because there is only one intellectual entity - the self-thinking intellect - which just has multiple aspects. On the other hand, there are many corporeal entities.

All of corporeal entities share something, that is, they are modifications of indeterminate matter, and they are modified by certain active forces or forms, which shape this matter into various entities. We then have three different types of entities in the corporeal world: the matter, forms shaping it and the concrete entities formed out of these. Plotinus does not at first make it clear whether all these three require a category of their own or whether they could all be grouped under one category, for instance, because they all underlie further characteristics of entities. Then again, Plotinus noted that while forms in question are somehow connected to the intellectual level and true being, matter, in comparison, is a mere weak shadow of being.

In addition to these three types of substances, corporeal world has quantities, which consist of numbers, dividing into odd and even numbers, and magnitudes, dividing into discrete and continuous magnitudes. Space and time, Plotinus said, are not among any of these classes.

Corporeal entities are not divided just by form and by quantities, but also by further qualities, which are, as it were, images of forms, just like forms are images of intellectual level. Just like forms were in Plotinus’ system kind of forces, qualities are also - for instance, green is just a power to cause a certain type of sensation in a person. Plotinus classified qualities primarily into those belonging more to the corporeal world (e.g. colours) and those belonging more to souls (e.g. characteristics of behaviour). He also remarked that further classifications of qualities should be based on the different powers these qualities are - green differs from blue, because blue causes a different type of sensation. Then again, he noted, all differentiations don’t correspond to some qualities, for example, non-white differs from white, but non-white is no individual force that would cause some type of sensation.

Corporeal world also has processes, which differ from intellectual process of self-thinking thought by consisting of truly different states, whereas the activity of self-thinking remains always same. This stability of self-thinking thought is not same as rest in the corporeal sense, which is just lack of processuality. Corporeal processes, Plotinus noted, could be divided into active and passive processes, but he still favoured the Aristotelian division into four kinds: generation/destruction of substances, change of qualities, change of quantities and movement or change of place.

The final category Plotinus admitted into his account of corporeal world was relations. Other Aristotelian categories, he said, reduced to former categories. Thus, space, Plotinus said, was just a system of certain relations between bodies.

The two sets of categories applied to different levels in Plotinian hierarchy: the eternal and the temporal. The eternity of the intellectual level, Plotinus said, is nothing arbitrarily connected with it. Instead, he noted, true being just is by definition stable and never-ending, full and conscious life without any restrictions, with the five categories as aspects that can be differentiated within it.

What then is the time that distinguishes the world of corporeal categories from the eternal? Many earlier philosophers, Plotinus noted, had connected time with the movement of celestial spheres. Yet, he remarked, time certainly couldn’t be movement, because movement was more something happening within time. Even the Aristotelian definition of time as the measure of movement Plotinus found wanting, because he thought time was instead something, parts of which could be measured, but due to its unlimitedness it couldn’t itself be a measure.

Plotinus’ own solution was to connect time with soul. In its natural state, soul would have regarded things in an eternal manner. Yet, it desired to view things originally forming a unity as clearly distinct and one after another. This process of soul viewing things one at a time or the image of eternity seen through the lens of soul’s peculiar way of regarding things then just is what time is in its essence, Plotinus suggested. The movement of the celestial spheres, the most prominent form of temporal movement, is then just something happening within soul. Why then all individual souls seem to exist in the same time, one might ask. Plotinus’s answer was that this just belied the common origin of all souls.